German amusement park shuts down ‘swastika’ ride

Christian Fleetwood

22 Aug2019

A German amusement park has closed a controversial ride after people complained it looked like a big, spinning swastika.

Deutsche Welle (DW) reported on Wednesday that a new ride at the “Tatzmania” amusement park in Löffingen, a town in southwest Germany, was shut down this week because of complaints it looked like a massive, flying swastika.

Yes, you read that correctly.

The “Adlerflug” (“Eagle’s Flight”) will now be redesigned to be three-pronged instead of four, after video and photos of the ride were posted to social media that prompted widespread backlash.

On one thread discussing the tourism blunder, a Reddit user pointed out their astonishment that the notorious symbol of Nazi Germany hadn’t been picked up in production.

“Not in the initial sketches. Not in the blueprints. Not in a computer design program. Not in the assembly. Not in the test runs. Not in person, at the park… but in social media pictures was the likeness spotted,” u/Elevenst wrote.

Following the backlash, the owners of the amusement park reportedly decided to close the ride immediately and redesign it together with the alleged Italian manufacturer.

Rüdiger Braun, owner of the amusement park, told the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) he was sorry about the ride’s design, as reported by DW.

“First of all, I would like to emphasise that I would like to apologise with all form to all persons who feel disturbed and insulted by our design,” Braun said, adding that the ride would be redesigned with three spinning eagles, rather than four.

“Then we will have this problem under control,” he said.

One Tatzmania patron told DW he thought it was strange that no one had noticed the ride’s shape earlier.

“One wonders, of course, how one builds something like this; on the one hand, because it still is a sensitive topic,” the patron said.

“On the other hand, it is only the engineering, and it just happens to look like that.”

Featured image (Reddit): ‘That’s an interesting shape for a ride @Tatzmania Löffingen’by u/bluegamesful